


Thirty-Eight Hours

by Aphelyon



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Blood and Injury, Character Study, Character with PTSD, Gen, Healing, M/M, Memories, Mental Health Issues, Mild Hurt/Comfort, New Beginnings, Post-Reflections, Reflection, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/pseuds/Aphelyon
Summary: In the aftermath of the battle for the future, and a long day of adrenaline running high, Hugh reflects on the past thirty-eight hours; how his life has taken a new route, how he'll come to terms with his decisions and how the severity of Paul's injury rocked him.





	Thirty-Eight Hours

**Author's Note:**

> **Unauthorized copying of this work, any and all of my works, inclusive of writing and all artwork imagery of my creations, to any and all other sites is not permitted.**
> 
> Culmets Week 2019, Prompt; _"Accident/Caring for the Other." _
> 
> Un-beta'd and a little rough. Mentions of blood within and very light medical detail. Maybe also a little bit of janky medical terminology.

Hugh has been awake for thirty-eight hours, forty-eight minutes and counting. His body might be brand new but even that doesn’t matter. The sheer amount of time he’s been awake for coupled with the immense stress... no matter who you are, it was far too much for far too long. For the majority of those hours his body had been running on pure adrenaline. From when they went on the run from Control, to having to prepare for their final stand-off and then battle itself - the battle for their future. Hugh’s future changing drastically through the choices he made in just a matter of hours.

The battle was won when they secured their future by letting go of their past and flinging themselves into the future. The lives of everyone on board of the Discovery are left behind as they followed Commander Burnhams courageous lead, folding time itself to pass into an unknown future 

When Hugh had said to Paul in the hours before; ‘forward motion’ - he didn’t dare dream just how far that could have meant.

The waters of the space around them are now calm, but simply put, his mind and body are flung to the rocks, wrecked.

Over the past endless hours, he has seen his life flash before his eyes more times than he can count. Flashes of his short life as he’s known it since his resurrection, and then of memories of his old life, in his old body, constantly being brought to the forefront of his mind throughout the battle. Those flashes invoked emotions and they crashed, untried and untested against his mind and within his heart - feelings he had long tried to summon and connect to, now brought up amidst one of the most important fights in their history. It was honestly less than convenient timing, with needing to be more present of mind than ever to get through everything. He had to push those feelings to the side in order to do his job as quickly and efficiently as he could manage.  
  
The ship had shuddered and threw them around like rag-dolls relentlessly. He was no longer afraid of dying, he’s already done that after all, but he would do his damned best to save as many people as he could before - if - that happened again. This time it would have been at the agency of his own choices that lead him to that moment. Despite ever looming possibility of dying - again - and being tossed about with each blast, his hands remained steady through pure resolve, as did his heart and his mind. 

At least until Paul was brought in, bloodied and limp - and fear was the only thing he felt.

The ship has long ago stopped shaking and throwing them from their feet. Regardless, his heart remains beating wildly in his chest, his hands are his again, now free to shake; so they do.  
  
Trembling, he turns on the faucet and stepping into the shower uniform and all. The water cascades over his head, shoulders, arms and all over his uniform, down his waist, legs and feet pooling in deep red as the blood and grime of the battle wash off him. It’s hard to think that the water itself isn’t made of the blood of all his fallen comrades. 

_His uniform being torn and eaten away in front of his face. Something is boring into his flesh. His skin is being eaten away, but he can’t see any blood. They’re eating him - all of him- faster then he can even bleed. His terrified, pained screams go unheard, unanswered. And it burns, it burns, it - _  
  
“Computer! Turn up the lights!” He yells the command, nearly screams it.  
  
The computer responds to his command, the bright lights illuminate him. The light refracts off the droplets on his skin, the walls of the shower and the stream of water that cascades over him. 

_You’re in the shower. The water is running._ _It feels cool, and... good_. He looks over himself to see that his flesh is whole, not a mark, still pristine - and blood - there is blood, and this tells him that this is real. He’s okay.  
  
If his skin is unbroken, whose blood is this? The thought comes hazily, trying to piece through a foggy and desperately tired mind. Trying to piece the information together is made difficult from the unexpected lurch into the horrors that live in the recesses of his mind. When it becomes clear as he realises whose blood he is covered in, his heart lurches.

The blood… Well, it’s from everyone. So many of his crew members had sustained bloodied injuries within the throws of battle, he had jumped in to help them. Hugh knows, however, that most of the blood is Paul’s. 

_ It’s Paul’s and you're soaked in it. His blood is dripping off your skin, down the drain. It’s not your blood, it’s Paul’s blood - this is Paul’s blood. _  
  
Unsure if that’s better or worse and for a moment it doesn’t matter. With trembling hands he removes the heavy waterlogged and blood stained uniform from his body, tossing it into the corner of the shower. It hits the floor and walls with a wet vehement smack.

It’s worse. It’s definitely worse that it’s Paul’s blood. He shouldn’t have Paul’s blood on him, that can only indicate one thing; he’s hurt, badly. 

Violently scrubbing at his skin, he scrubs and washes Paul’s blood off him. 

As the stained water washes off him, his mind flicking back to the time where Paul beamed into medbay via emergency transport with both of his sides pierced with multiple deep entrance wounds. The memory of his manic laughter is still shrill and harrowing, it no longer feels distant. With each laugh, and each breath the blood pumped into his lungs but also out of his torso, pooling to the bed below, enough to drip down onto the floor. 

It wasn’t until midway through the first succession of scans was he able deem it safe enough to administer a sedative and Paul rolled his head over to look directly at him for the first time since beaming in. Hugh has no doubt that his emotions were plainly conveying in his eyes - swirling with the mix of how stricken with worry, anger and relief he felt. Despite being under heavy pain-killers while Hugh worked at repairing his cracked ribs, the last thing to do before dermal-regeneration treatments, Paul was lucid enough to take all of it in. Silent tears fell rolled down his cheeks to the headrest supporting him, but he never looked away - seeing only Hugh. There’s few times he has ever seen Paul cry, never did he look nor sound as pained as he did then. _ ‘I’m sorry,’ _ he said in a low voice, just meant for Hugh _ ‘I had to.’ _ Hugh couldn't bring himself to respond, his throat remained tight all the way through sealing the punctures with the dermal-regeneration. 

He had hoped that he’d never have Paul’s blood on his hands ever again after that.

With steadying breaths, he leans against the wall, head in his arms and lets the water cascade over him. 

This time Paul’s injuries are so severe - _ were _so severe - and he worked desperately to save his life. There was nothing more important to him than this, and he felt that being able to fight for Paul’s life - like no one else could possibly - made his decision to stay onboard all the more resonant that it was the best choice he could have made. In the moment, he didn’t even think anything of the blood that stained his skin and uniform as he worked, the only thing that mattered was saving Paul.

“Paul is safe. He’s in med. He’s safe because you saved him,” the familiar habit of speaking to himself, like he did when he was profoundly alone, coming back to him as a strange balm to his current unease in an unconscious act to attempt to stablise himself further. “You removed the shrapnel, regenerated his thoracic aorta and ...and repaired the hole in his heart,”

_Which one, though? _  
  
Those bleary, barely conscious eyes that looked up at him in awe and confusion while he poured his heart out to Paul, saying all the things that took him too long to realise, scared that perhaps it might have been too late.  
  
“H-his right ventricle,” he adds more specifically, his knuckles going white against the wall as he stammers over his words momentarily. “He’s stable now. You closed his wounds, fused his fractures, regenerated his dermal layer, ran the transfusion… He’s stable… _ He’s stable _ .”  
  
After several long strained breaths, that ease into more steady, deep breaths, he opens his eyes - not realising he had closed them again. The water that is still flowing over him, and down the drain, is now clear again, no blood or grime to be seen, and indiscernible from his tears. He’s clean and safe once again. 

The water stops automatically as he steps free of the shower. He grabs one of the dark grey towels, scrubbing his skin just a little harder than necessary as he dries himself, whispering to himself that he’s safe, over and over. Whether he is speaking about himself or Paul, he doesn’t linger on the thought.

With a clearer mind, despite his sleep deprivation now crashing down on him with his lowered barriers, he can see that their quarters are an absolute mess.  
  
_ Paul’s quarters. _ He reminds himself. There is now a hole in the ship where his had been, meaning he has lost everything that he had in there, not that it was a whole lot. But things were just things, and things did not make a home - people did. He didn’t know where else to go. There were announcements of temporary lodgings being set up for those who found themselves displaced, but Hugh’s feet automatically brought him here, to a home they once shared, no longer feeling displaced.

Staring out over the messy quarters, thinking how Paul - perfectly neat, orderly Paul - despite his lethargy would no doubt tidy everything away until he would have been satisfied enough to not let it bother him, at least enough so that he could have slept. Everything around the room is upended and strewn all over the place, product of being tossed around in the battle.

He’ll tidy before Paul is discharged from med, but not tonight. 

Clearing pathways through the mess with his feet, he makes his way to the bed and pulls back the covers. They had been tucked so tightly into the bed that they are probably the only thing that had not shifted during the battle. With how perfect the sheets were, it almost makes them look as though the bed had not been slept in for a while. It was undisturbed and perfect, other than a few things that Hugh cleared off the top of it that had landed there.

He sinks into what used to be his side of the bed, his legs just about giving out underneath him in surrender to the prospect of sleep. The fabric is divine and welcoming against his skin, and he knows it’s not logical that it feels better than his own sheets in his own, now destroyed, quarters, which were made of the very same material but he can’t help but think it’s true. It feels familiar, no longer distant, and smells of _him_ \- of home.  
  
There’s a faint, muffled crack as his head hits his pillow eagerly, and something hard is jutting into the top of his shoulder. His muscles protest when he urges his body upwards, enough to reach under his pillow and pull the hard object out, as tempting and as easy as it would be right now to fall asleep despite the uncomfortable object slightly pressing into him.

He pulls out a photo frame, the glass now with a huge ugly crack on the side. Whatever doubts that Hugh had, that his words had come too late and over what Paul might think of them; despite his faint but peaceful smile as he slipped into a coma and despite of everything that happened between them. This photo of them embracing, both of squinting from the bright sun that shines on the Lelepa Island, and Paul's lips pressed to the side of his face, was tucked under what used to be his pillow… It confirms that his words didn’t come too late.

“He’ll be alright,” he says, softly to himself.

A chime on his PADD sounds out, breaking him from his thoughts, snatching his finger away from the glass. He wipes his eyes, and reaches for the device instead.

Thoughtful, kind, Doctor Pollard. His brave colleague, and considerate friend. Despite the chaos of the over-thirty-eight-odd hours, she had thought of him when she should be resting too, and knowing what he needed more than he did himself right now. She sent him a specific access to the monitoring system of Paul’s vitals, so even while in his bed, he can look out for him.  
  
_ He’s stable… It’s okay, he’s going to be alright. _

Hugh breathes a long exhausted sigh, the final iota of tension seeping out of him, trusting that everything is going to be alright as he opens the tab. Watching Paul’s vitals ebb and flow calmly, with the photo resting on top of Paul’s pillow beside him, his eyes grow heavy. Paul’s gentle, regular eachiochardiographic and magnetoencephalographic waveforms lull him into a well needed, deep, deep sleep.  
  
Now in separate beds, in separate parts of the ship, they both rest but are more together than they have been for a long, long time. Their future is awaiting them when they wake from their well earned sleep. 

//End

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, I really, really love your thoughts and feedback. I appreciate it a lot.
> 
> You can also come find me over at [tumblr](https://aphelyons.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/Aphelyons) \- I post drawings/paintings of Culmets stuff I do there too.


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